How long to image the Whale Galaxy with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 49 min (737 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Whale Galaxy. A quick look takes 12 min; a showpiece 3 h 16 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 29 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 45% of the frame’s short side.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 7 min101 subs | 27 min402 subs | 1 h 47 min1,608 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 7 min104 subs | 27 min413 subs | 1 h 50 min1,649 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 7 min108 subs | 29 min432 subs | 1 h 55 min1,727 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 8 min120 subs | 32 min479 subs | 2 h 08 min1,915 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 9 min139 subs | 37 min554 subs | 2 h 28 min2,213 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 12 min185 subs | 49 min737 subs | 3 h 16 min2,945 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 18 min272 subs | 1 h 12 min1,085 subs | 4 h 49 min4,339 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 27 min407 subs | 1 h 48 min1,626 subs | 7 h 14 min6,503 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 46 min695 subs | 3 h 05 min2,780 subs | 12 h11,119 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 1 h 04 min of run time. The eQuinox 2’s battery (rated about 11 h) should cover it; a power bank still keeps the phone running the app alive. (Bortle 6, solid image; we allow 30% over the integration time.)
- USB-C power bank 20000mAh 5V 2AUnistellar asks for a 5 V 2 A output; PD is not needed.
- red LED head torchRed light keeps your night vision; white light costs you twenty minutes of dark adaptation every time.
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Everything that fits the eQuinox 2 →
How it frames
The Whale Galaxy is 15.5′ × 2.7′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it fills 45% of the frame’s short side.
About the Whale Galaxy
A distorted edge-on galaxy with a small companion on its back, and the Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) in the same wide field.
NGC 4631, Caldwell 32 · Galaxy in Canes Venatici · magnitude 9.2 · 15.5′ × 2.7′ · best in Mar, Apr, May. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Galaxies are broadband targets: their light is mostly starlight spread across the spectrum, so a dual-band filter throws most of it away and makes things slower, not faster. Shoot without a filter (or with a plain UV/IR cut) and rely on total time and a dark sky. The core of a galaxy is usually many times brighter than its outer disc, so a short stack shows the nucleus long before the arms; the figures here are for the arms and disc, not the core.
Field rotation in Alt-Az mode crops the edges of the stack over a long session, so on a big galaxy re-centre now and then or use EQ mode where your scope supports it.
About the Unistellar eQuinox 2
A 114 mm Newtonian with five times the light grasp of a 50 mm refractor. Fixed 4 s subs put it in read-noise territory under dark skies, but the aperture carries it. The published field is 45.6′ × 34.2′, a crop of the sensor.
Fixed 4 s subs in Enhanced Vision; they cannot be changed. No built-in filter. Unistellar sells only a solar filter and says a third-party filter is at your own risk and voids the warranty.
The eQuinox 2 uses fixed 4 s subs, so the only levers you have are the sky you shoot from, the filter, and total time.
Stack across nights. Every smart scope app can continue a stack or you can combine the saved frames on a computer; the figures here are totals, not single-session limits.
Have an image of the Whale Galaxy from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Whale Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50: 55 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 1 h from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30: 57 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 1 h 03 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 1 h 19 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 54 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the DwarfLab Draco: 45 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 3 h 06 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera II: 55 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 2 h 02 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 52 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 1 h 56 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey: 3 h 46 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Celestron Origin: 14 min from Bortle 6
- Whale Galaxy with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 20 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Whale Galaxy · All targets for the eQuinox 2